Because, the path variable is including these files, you can get a headache trying to figure out why the java -version or javac -version keeps pointing to the old JAVA_HOME: rename those files, take out the extension with an underscore, for instance. And then, you only will have to create the JAVA_HOME variable, add it to the path variable (e.g., %JAVA_HOME%) and append the "\bin" particle. This way you need to only change the JAVA_HOME variable pointing to different JRE or JDK and have multiple installations of java just by setting JAVA_HOME.